Bloomberg, get over it
Sunday's New York Times (2/06/08) examined the increasingly routine custom, somehow scandalous in my great city, of churches renting public school auditoriums for weekend services. Among others, the Times profiled our friends at Christ Tabernacle:
Christ Tabernacle is just one of at least two dozen churches and other religious groups that have found homes in New York City public schools since a 2002 federal court ruling said the city had to provide space in school buildings to religious institutions just as it did for other community groups. The churches typically rent on Sundays, when students are not present, and reimburse the city for the cost of custodial services. The churches - often desperate for space - say the arrangement is only fair. But the practice, generally accepted across the country, has run into opposition from some parents in New York City, and the Bloomberg administration is planning to challenge the court ruling. (Read the full article here: "On Sundays, Hymn Books Replace Textbooks in City Schools.")Curiously, Bloomberg never made a public issue of the practice until this year, when he's up for reelection in the fall. The concern voiced by at least one connected and outspoken parent, apparently shared by members of the administration, is that renting space to churches when students are not present somehow amounts to an "intrusion of religion into New York public schools" that has not been seen since "the early 1930's." It's going to be fun to watch this controversy play out in court -- that is if the aforementioned legal challenge doesn't get dismissed first. Within the last four years, the federal courts have repeatedly said that it is unconstitutional to exclude religious services from NYC public schools. In 2001, the US Supreme Court ruled in Good News Club v. Milford that public schools must allow religious groups to rent space if the schools allow other community groups to rent the same space. In 2002, the Manhattan-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court's ruling (applying the Supreme Court's decision) that the NYC school board violated the First Amendment by singling out worship services for exclusion from its buildings. Bloomberg will need to devise clever and novel legal arguments in order for a judge to overturn these precedents.
posted by Jeremy Del Rio @ 2/08/2005 06:13:00 PM
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